A Thank You Letter To The Man Who Ghosted Me
To the man I went on four dates with, who then ghosted me days before my birthday, I want to say thank you.
Seriously, thank you.
Without you, a certain app, and an unwillingness to become bitter about dating, I would have never met my fiancé.
I know it may sound crazy sending someone who hurt your feelings a letter of appreciation, but here it is. Truthfully, I was not as grateful for your passive rejection when it happened. I learned from my experience that you can have what appears to be a great connection with someone right away and it still doesn’t always work out. In fact, it doesn’t work out more often than it does.
Dating is weird.
It’s a combination of common sense and the nonsensical thoughts and actions we find our otherwise rational selves entertaining. If you’re currently single and reading this, you may feel that if you listen to your head you’ll be alone forever and if you listen to your heart, you’ll be a continuously let down hopeless romantic.
I was recently asked about why ghosting is the “norm” when it comes to modern dating. Well, we live in a society where most people choose what is easy over what is right. We also consider ghosting to be the considerate form of rejection until the roles are reversed. Unfortunately, ghosting will stay the mainstream form of “thanks but no thanks” unless we normalize friendly rejection.
So we know it happens, and we know we need to stop doing it. But does being ghosted hold any benefits? Absolutely!
It’s a time saver.
It helps you define and set clear boundaries moving forward.
It encourages moving on without closure.
It can turn indifference into empathy.
Now let's unpack each of these a bit.
(1) It’s a time saver
I know most of the men out there haven’t seen the film “He’s Just Not That Into You”, but the message is simple—if they like you you will know, if they don’t you will be confused.
If you take uncertainty as a no, you will save countless hours of “what if” scenarios. Take it from someone who has heard every ghosting story there is.
(2) It helps you define and set clear boundaries moving forward
Before your divorce you may have not been able to clearly define what your boundaries were. When you’re in the thick of a situation it’s often not easy to not see the big picture.
Ghosting allows you to set boundaries for behaviors which are acceptable or unacceptable in future relationships. Boundaries show people how you want to be treated.
(3) It encourages moving on without closure
Life can be messy. There are a lot of aspects of our lives which we aren’t in control of. When things end there is not always a clear conversation or event for closure (besides those divorce papers).
We will not always get the closure we want, but have to be okay with moving forward anyways.
(4) It can turn indifference into empathy
Most of the time after being ghosted you first think, “Well f*ck you too, Jerry.” Then after pretending to not care the self doubt comes in. After self doubt comes acceptance.
It can be easy to build up a dating callous, so to speak. It’s a natural feeling to want to build up defenses after continuously being hurt and let down.
If you do this, you’re only hurting yourself. You are robbing yourself from wonderful people and opportunities which you may push away because of some jaded people you’ve met.
Ask yourself, are they worth it?
Final thoughts
People will let you down. They will disappoint the hell out of you. At the end of the day, the only control you have is of two things 1) how you handle it and 2) how you choose to show up in the world.
